This is an excerpt from a thread in Discussion. It was suggested to put it here. It is not intended to replace the Community Statement post above.

1. This board is not owned by any individual, nor select group of individuals from among the members or from elsewhere. It is the joint property of ALL members.

2. No member will ever have his/her posts deleted or edited in any way by anyone else, so long as they do not contain spam or illegal content (warez or child pr0n being the examples that come to mind) or links to such things. No member will ever be banned, (spam-bots excepted) unless they persist in posting illegal content. No amount of dissension or disagreement nor personal attacks will get you banned, so don't ask to be!

4. All administrators, Custodians, and any other "staff" are accountable to the community for their actions or lack thereof, and are subject to removal from office by the will of a simple majority of votes.

5. Any member can start a thread about any topic related to forum business in the Discussion section, including but not limited to, a call for removal of a staff member from office. ANY member, ANY time, ANY topic that relates to forum business.

6. The nonsense section shall remain free from moderation in any form, so long as content is legal (see above).

7. Posts: Members own their posts. Period. Deleting or editing a member's post by anyone else, no matter how lofty their position, is prohibited and will probably result in impeachment. However, members do NOT "own" their posts placement.Staff have the right to move or copy posts to other sections, so long as they state the reason for the move. As with any staff action, it can be repealed by simple majority vote.

8. Threads: When one starts a thread, they "own" it until someone makes a reply. At that point it becomes the property of the community, subject to the will and governance of the community.

9. Moving and copying posts, and moving and splitting threads fall under the category of housekeeping and not moderation, with two caveats; the ideas expressed in the posts/threads are unchanged, just in different locations, and anyone taking these actions must explain the reasoning behind the actions. As always, such actions are open to appeal and over-turning by the will of the community.

*Edit* 3-22-2012 added specifics about spam in article #2, as per suggestion by Huggybear below.